Ruth Kelly: I know that my hon. Friend has deep concerns about the matter, and many in the House were scarred by the experience of grant-maintained schools, but I can give him the assurance that thetrust school model is the antithesis of the grant-maintained school model, in that trusts remain as local authority-maintained schools, where local authorities are responsible for the financial control and for ensuring adequate financial controls in schools—indeed, they fund the schools and can withdraw the delegated funding where they consider that there is an issue to resolve, as well as being responsible for ensuring adequate standards.

Robert Flello: My hon. Friend will no doubt be aware of the excellent work already done by many local voluntary groups working with young people in my city. One of the best ways that my hon. Friend could help with that work would be to visit my constituency. Has he any plans to do so in the near future?

Jacqui Smith: Teaching social behaviour helps children learn. That is why we have made the Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning programme available to all primary schools. Heads are best placed to decide how that work should be organised in their schools, but they have the flexibility to allocate dedicated time, as part of the recommended whole-curriculum approach.

Graham Allen: Will my right hon. Friend thank her departmental officials and the local education authority team, led by Edwina Grant, in Nottingham, for the innovative work that they are doing on the promotion of social behaviour in the city? Will my right hon. Friend consider the very first amendment to the Education and Inspections Bill, which suggests that local education authorities should have a duty to promote the emotional wellbeing and pro-social behaviour of every child? I hope that I have got the words right: I should have done, because I tabled the amendment.

Nicholas Winterton: I am sure that the Minister will agree—she said so, to all intents and purposes, in her answer—that good discipline and good social behaviour can contribute to the ability of young people to learn better in schools. What support do schools get from parents? Does she agree that the support of parents is essential and what can the Government do to encourage parents to support good social behaviour?

Keith Vaz: My hon. and learned Friend will know that the first full performance review of the CPS was published on Tuesday. It showed that performance was less than good in more than half of CPS areas and that in most, there was a failure to communicate with victims of crime—to tell them that charges had either been dropped or reduced. Those are damning criticisms of the CPS. What steps is my hon. and learned Friend going to take to ensure that the Director of Public Prosecutions is aware of these failings—and what is the CPS going to do to get its act together?

Mike O'Brien: If the hon. Gentleman had listened when the review was announced, he would know that the Home Secretary made it clear that the mandatory life sentence for murder will indeed remain. The murder principle set out in the Criminal Justice Act 2003 will also remain. The Government passed that Act to ensure effective sentencing principles in dealing with murder cases, which, I have to say—given the way that the hon. Gentleman asked his question—his party singularly failed to do when in power.

Simon Hughes: Does the Solicitor-General agree that it is far better to respond to the Law Commission's proposals in the rational and measured way that it made its proposals, than in the histrionic manner that we just heard from the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies)? The Law Commission has made it clear that the law is in a mess, that it is not saying and doing what the public think it is, and that it needs reform. The best way to get reform is to have a rational debate and to build consensus. Will the Solicitor-General commend the Law Commission's very sensible proposals?

Mike O'Brien: I suspect that the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) and other Back-Bench Opposition Members, may take that inquiry as something of a rebuke for the way that he asked his original question. The hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) is right that it is important that we consider these matters with a degree of calm and ensure that the public have confidence in the sentences that are passed. The Law Commission is looking at how such matters should be dealt with. We must await the outcome of that, but the Government are discussing how to ensure that people understand better precisely what a sentence passed by a judge will mean in practice for each defendant. There are ways to achieve that, but we must approach the matter through a process of consultation and not by making announcements here. However, I take on board the point that the hon. Gentleman makes.

Mike O'Brien: The hon. Lady needs to raise this issue with my hon. Friend at the Home Office and, in due course, with Royal Mail. I share some of her concerns about how Royal Mail has decided to deal with this matter. The appropriate method for reporting abuse is via the Royal Mail security team, which then liaises with the police in investigations, but it is also important that we ensure that a person whose mail is diverted is able to get to the bottom of what on earth went on. That is why I have had a conversation with my hon. Friend at the Home Office, and I hope that the hon. Lady will be able to take those discussions further.

Theresa May: I suspect that not all Members will be aware that this morning it has been announced in a written statement that due to chaos in the Rural Payments Agency, which is responsible for the single farm payment, the chief executive has been replaced—I assume that means sacked. May we have an oral statement on Monday from the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs so that Members can question Ministers and raise farmers' concerns about the failure of that agency?
	I appreciate that there will be a statement today by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on the Government's response to the parliamentary ombudsman's report, "Trusting in the pensions promise". However, the Government's initial attempt to dismiss the ombudsman's findings called into question her role and her ability to act on the referrals that she receives from hon. Members. Constituents assume that the ombudsman is the last line of defence against possible maladministration by the Government. The ombudsman serves this House. Will the right hon. Gentleman arrange for a debate on the role and powers of the parliamentary ombudsman?
	The latest annual study by the Association of Directors of Social Services shows that council social services departments have a funding shortfall of £1.76 billion, some of which is due to deficits in the health service. Crucially, that means that councils are cutting the provision of services to elderly and other vulnerable people. May we have a statement on joint funding and working between health and social services and a debate on the provision of social care?
	In business questions recently, I, and other hon. Members, asked for a debate on the withdrawal of the Post Office card account and the possible resultant closure of 10,000 post offices. The right hon. Gentleman dismissed those concerns. Last week, in reply to the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Mudie) he said:
	"No one is suggesting that people should be forced to use the banks. Indeed, I have been at great pains to emphasise that there is a range of accounts available at the post office".—[Official Report, 9 March 2006; Vol. 443, c. 955.]
	I have checked the Post Office website. There are indeed accounts that can be used at the post office. They are accounts that are held at Abbey, Alliance & Leicester, Bank of Ireland, Bank of Scotland, Barclays, Clydesdale Bank, the Co-operative Bank, First Trust Bank—the list goes on. Unless I am mistaken—and the names do rather give it away—those are all banks, although there is one building society, the Nationwide. Will the right hon. Gentleman explain to the House what accounts the Post Office provides as an alternative to the card account? I ask him again for a debate on the future of the Post Office.
	Finally, may we have a debate on standards of financial management? I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman was concerned that the treasurer of the Labour Party did not know that the party had received a loan of £1.5 million. I wonder what account the money went into if the treasurer did not know about it. Should we assume that the money went into a hedge fund? The Labour party treasurer is married to the Minister of State at the Department for Constitutional Affairs, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) who speaks for the Government on the funding of political parties. Indeed, in a debate in Westminster Hall on 8 November last year, the right hon. and learned Lady said:
	"We do not have any millionaires in Peckham, and we probably do not have any people who would donate £5,000".
	She went on to say in reference to local party members:
	"If they think that donations are entirely the remit of millionaires, they will feel that they themselves do not matter".—[Official Report, Westminster Hall, 8 November 2005; Vol. 439, c. 20WH.]
	Could she not have helped her husband out on this matter, or is this yet another Labour household where financial matters are not discussed over the breakfast table?

Geoff Hoon: I will certainly give it a try.
	The House has clearly been concerned for some time about rural payments. Business questions have been asked routinely about the difficulties faced by farmers who have not received appropriate payments, so I would have thought that the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) would have congratulated my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on dealing with the matter. Where there are problems, it is obviously right that the Government and accountable Ministers should take the action necessary to bring about an improvement in the situation. I can assure the House that that is precisely what my right hon. Friend has done through her decision.
	On pensions, I can assure the House that no one is dismissing the report of the parliamentary ombudsman. Indeed, after business questions, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions will make a statement to the House about the report, as is appropriate. As the House is aware, it has a proper process for dealing with reports from the parliamentary ombudsman and, as I understand it, that proper process will be pursued by the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, which again is as it should be.
	The responsible Minister at the Department of Health is looking at any shortfalls that may arise in social services. I have made clear to the House before the importance of health service bodies being able to deal with deficits and having appropriate procedures and accountancy standards to deal with them. I am sure that all Members want the huge amount of extra money that the Government have put into the health service to be spent wisely and effectively on continuing to improve health care both for the elderly, in conjunction with social services across the country, and for all other users of the service.
	I look forward to the right hon. Member for Maidenhead telling the House about the evidence on which she relied when suggesting, in rather emotive terms, that 10,000 rural post offices will be closing. I have seen that in headlines and in newspapers and although there is a tendency for the Opposition to believe all they read in the Daily Mail, it is not necessarily the best source for research or advice. Nevertheless, I take seriously the future of the Post Office—the Government take it extremely seriously. I have previously set out the position on Post Office accounts and accounts that can be used at the post office. It is important that pensioners and others get the best return on their savings and their money. I have generally assumed that the Conservative party supports financial improvement for pensioners, so I am a little surprised that week in, week out Opposition Members continue to suggest that pensioners should not get the best return on their savings and their accounts. That is the implication of the right hon. Lady's suggestion.
	The Government have introduced clear standards of transparency on financial management in respect of donations—[Laughter.] Quite why that should cause the Opposition so much entertainment is difficult to understand. Without those arrangements we would not be aware of the range of contributions that have been made to the Conservative party over the years. The Government have no difficulty about discussing such matters and I am surprised that Opposition Members are not a little more embarrassed about the history of the arrangements in their party.

Geoff Hoon: I have no knowledge of that. But in any event it is something that is clearly thoroughly disapproved of, and something that I assure the House does not happen.
	On the question of a wider foreign affairs debate, we have regularly scheduled such debates. I am sure that it will be possible to have such a debate in the future. This week we had Foreign and Commonwealth Office questions, where I know that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary went out of his way to provide as much detail as he could at the time in relation to recent and very troubling events in Palestine. That is a subject that I am sure the House would want to return to, and certainly we will look at the possibility of arranging such a debate.

Gavin Strang: Does my right hon. Friend agree that right hon. and hon. Labour Members are justly proud of the fact that it was a Labour Government, after returning to power in 1997, who introduced and enacted the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, which, yes, brought a real transparency to the funding of political parties? [Interruption.] Hon. Members should read the thing. Yes, it brought transparency covering donations; but I hope that some Opposition Members will read it, and agree that we need and want a debate to discuss how quickly we can introduce amending legislation to cover loans as well as donations. It is as simple at that.

Desmond Swayne: The Leader of the House expressed incredulity that Opposition Members keep raising, week after week, the Post Office card account? Can he not just take us at our word? We want a debate. There are 9,000 account holders in the New Forest. They are anxious and angry about the proposals to abolish their accounts. They expect both my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) and myself to raise that issue, ask Ministers questions and demand to scrutinise the Government's proposals.

John Bercow: May we please have a debate in Government time on prison education? Given that children in young offenders institutions on average receive only eight hours education a week and that the operation of the churn means that thousands of young people are constantly shunted from one institution to another before they have had the chance finish their education or training and to acquire the qualifications that they seek, would not a debate allow right hon. and hon. Members to explore what is being done by both the Home Office and the Department for Education and Skills to tackle that phenomenon and to give those young people the chance to reform and constructively to contribute to our society?

Philip Davies: The Leader of the House may not be aware of the case of Stephen Ayre, a convicted murderer who was let out of prison early and who then abducted and raped a young boy in my constituency. Given that 7,000 crimes have been committed by people out of prison on tags and that 1,600 crimes have been committed since 1997 by people out on parole, will the Leader of the House provide time for a debate on sentencing? Many people in my constituency are angry that people sent to prison are let out early to commit crimes such as the one that I have described. People want prisoners to serve their sentences in full. Can we have debate on this issue?

Mark Lancaster: Can we have a debate on domestic violence victims who do not have any recourse to public funds? I pay tribute to good work of the MK Lighthouse project, but overseas nationals who are married to British and EU nationals face a stark choice if they are victims of domestic violence. Either they leave the home and face destitution, because they do not have recourse to public funds, or they stay in the violent home. The Government have acknowledged that problem by giving funds to Women's Aid, but those funds have now run out.

Tom Harris: The Leader of the Opposition told the House yesterday
	"We believe in parliamentary scrutiny".—[Official Report, 15 March 2006; Vol. 443, c. 1452.]
	This morning, however, when I attended the Ninth Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation to consider the Civil Proceedings Fees (Amendment) Order 2005, not a single member of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties bothered to turn up. We were bereft in particular of the hon. Members for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) and for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes). Can we have an early debate, but not too early in the morning, on the subject of alarm clocks and the Government distribution thereof to Opposition members?

James McGovern: I apologise for my late attendance in the House—I was at a meeting with a Tesco representative. Last Saturday, I was delighted to attend an event at the Tesco superstore in my constituency to promote its involvement in Fair Trade fortnight. I was therefore outraged to find out on Monday in the local press that Tesco is shedding more than 400 jobs in my constituency, without any prior consultation with the local council, the local chamber of commerce or myself. Can we have a debate in the House to discuss employment relations to ensure that employers such as Tesco do not behave in such a cavalier fashion?

Geoff Hoon: My hon. Friend has made his point. It is clearly important that major employers, particularly when contemplating significant reductions in their work force, ensure that members of Parliament and others affected by such matters are given as much advance warning as possible.

Bob Spink: Can the Secretary of State for Health come to the House and make a statement about the impending redundancies of NHS dentists, which are an unintended consequence of the new dental contract? Strategic health authorities and primary care trusts must be told by the Department of Health to stop the loss of NHS dental care, including from the excellent practice of Foreman in my constituency and other practices in south Essex.

Julian Lewis: On 16 February, the Leader of the House dismissed my request for a debate on honesty in sentencing, and today he was equally dismissive of the same request from my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), saying that he had focused on one case. John Monckton was murdered in his own home by someone who was released five years early from his sentence, and yesterday, we read about Robert Symons, who was murdered in his own home by someone who was released nearly three years early from his third sentence for burglary. Is it not the case that people are being killed because there is a policy to get offenders out of prison when they ought to remain there? Is not the solution to supply enough capacity in prisons to keep them there?

Andrew Murrison: Would the Leader of the House find time for a debate on the reason why the council tax misery of people living outside metropolitan areas has been compounded by unrestrained hikes in town council precepts, such as a remarkable 48 per cent. by Trowbridge town council in my constituency?

Geoff Hoon: The calculation of council tax is a matter primarily for local decision making which, in Trowbridge, is the responsibility of the town council. I expect that it is 48 per cent. of a fairly modest figure, given town councils' responsibilities, but nevertheless all councils should apply modest increases, because they affect those who have to pay them.

Anne McIntosh: In lending my support to a debate on single farm payments, I ask the Leader of the House to ensure that it takes place before the Easter recess. Will he visit auction marts like that in Thirsk in the Vale of York to see the distortion caused by Scottish farmers being paid the single farm payments in full and North Yorkshire farmers not being paid a penny?

John Hutton: With permission, I should like to make a statement on the ombudsman's report on the security of final salary occupational pensions published yesterday. The Parliamentary Commissioner's report is a detailed piece of work and, of course, deserves a proper, full and formal response. It is my intention to publish such a response in the next few weeks. However, I would like today to set out the reasons why, after very careful consideration, we have reached the view that we cannot accept any of the findings of maladministration and why we have therefore decided to reject all but one of her recommendations.
	The ombudsman's report concludes that over the period between 1996 and 2002, both this Government and the Conservative Government were guilty of maladministration in three principal areas. I would like to take each of those findings in turn. I make no apology for the detailed response that I am about to give. To offer anything less comprehensive would not properly reflect the importance of the report and the seriousness with which we treat the findings that the ombudsman has made against this Government and the Conservative Government. I should stress, in that context, my Department has co-operated fully with the ombudsman and her office during the preparation of the report. It has provided detailed information and documentation on request and it has commented extensively on the specific findings that the ombudsman had indicated that she intended to make. Those responses are set out in the report, included in a lengthy annexe to it.
	Turning to the individual findings: first, the ombudsman found that official information about the security that members of final salary occupational pension schemes could expect from the minimum funding requirement, introduced in the Pensions Act 1995, was sometimes inaccurate, incomplete, inconsistent and therefore potentially misleading, and that that constituted maladministration. We do not accept that the Department's leaflets were inaccurate, incomplete, inconsistent or misleading. It is true that some were more detailed than others, but that was because they were designed for different audiences. All the leaflets covered by the report carried very specific statements that they were not a full explanation of the law and were for general guidance only. The leaflets themselves make that clear.
	Perhaps I could illustrate those points by taking some of the key documents referred to in the report, in order. In 1996, the then Government published a guide to the 1995 Pensions Act—leaflet PEC3—which described the intention of the various measures in the Act, including the minimum funding requirement, or MFR, and how they were expected to operate. The leaflet also said:
	"This leaflet is a brief summary of the changes. If you need advice about your occupational pension, speak to the trustees or managers of the scheme . . . This leaflet gives general guidance only and should not be treated as a complete and authoritative statement of the law."
	That was very much the pattern.
	In July 1997, the Occupational Pensions Regulatory Authority—OPRA—guide for pension scheme trustees summarised what the minimum funding requirement was. The guide also said:
	"You"—
	that is, trustees—
	"will need to take advice from professional advisers so that you can use your powers and fulfil your duties properly. Please note that this guide should not be taken as a definitive statement of the law."
	In May 2002, the Department issued leaflet PM3: "Occupational Pensions—your guide". Although the guide did not discuss the risk of schemes winding up underfunded, it did say:
	"this guide . . . looks at some of the questions you may need to think about and it tells you where you can find more information . . . Read any pension information your employer gives you . . . This leaflet is for guidance only. It is not a complete statement of the law."
	The Government do not consider that any of the leaflets or quoted statements relied on by the ombudsman could have formed a proper basis for scheme members, still less trustees who were professionally advised, to assess the security of their individual pension schemes. But, even more importantly, the Government also believe that the report fails to demonstrate that decisions taken by individual scheme members were influenced by the information that the Government did, or did not, make available. In other words, the report simply does not establish that the wording of the leaflets led to the losses suffered by individuals.
	I now turn to the second finding of maladministration. The ombudsman says that the failure by the Department for Work and Pensions to review its existing information leaflets, when informed that scheme members and member trustees did not know the risks to their accrued pension rights, constituted maladministration. The Government do not believe that the information given to the Department by the actuarial profession during this time should have instigated a review of its publications.
	Those recommendations concerned how trustees—not the Government—should communicate with their members about the funding of their schemes. The Department invited views on that issue in the consultation document that it issued in September 2000 on the future of the minimum funding requirement. The response to that consultation led ultimately to proposals, which were then implemented, for the replacement of the minimum funding requirement. I want to say more about that replacement later. But so far as we are aware, no respondents suggested that departmental publications were causing confusion. They were not advising that the content of these leaflets concerning the purpose or intent of the minimum funding requirement was misleading or inaccurate. Ministers cannot fairly be criticised for failing to do something that was simply not proposed.
	Moreover, trustees had access to advice from their own scheme actuary, who would have been well aware of the operation of the minimum funding requirement. In addition each MFR certificate included a statement that meeting the minimum funding requirement did not equate to full buy-out. All of this information was available to scheme members. We do not believe that it would have been reasonable for trustees to have relied on publications issued by the DWP which were brief and general in nature, rather than the professional advice they had access to and were under an obligation to consult. Trustees were required to give all scheme members basic information about their scheme, and many trustees produced fairly detailed information booklets. We have seen no evidence from the report that the ombudsman has considered what information trustees supplied to their scheme members and what, if any, impact this information might have had.
	Thirdly, the ombudsman has said that the decision in 2002 by the Department for Work and Pensions to approve a change to the basis of the MFR was taken with maladministration. The Government believe that we acted wholly responsibly in implementing the recommendation of the actuarial profession which had received the backing of the independent Government Actuary's Department. The ombudsman has not allowed us to see the full actuarial advice on which some of her comments were based. The Government Actuary advised the ombudsman that, if this advice was not disclosed, it made it impossible for anyone to understand the basis on which she reached her conclusion that the Government were guilty of maladministration. As a result, we have not been able to see or challenge how she arrived at some of her conclusions on the 2002 change.
	The change in 2002 was intended to bring the MFR back to its original strength. Adjustments to the MFR were always on the principle of maintaining its 1997 level. This was the principle on which the actuarial profession kept the basis of the MFR under review and made recommendations to the Department. It was also the basis on which the Government Actuary's Department advised my Department. The report published yesterday contains a letter from the Government Actuary, referring to the decision criticised by the ombudsman, and I want to quote from it. It says that
	"the evidence base"
	for the DWP's decision
	"was not insufficient since it was based on strong advice from the actuarial profession, which had been developed by a committee containing leading technical experts from most of the major firms of actuaries, and supplemented by GAD as a further independent source of advice. The evidence base for this decision was in fact extremely strong and much stronger than for many (perhaps most) of the decisions that have to be taken by Government."
	The ombudsman acknowledges in her report that the 2002 change did not affect the degree of knowledge which scheme members had.
	Against this background, the Government have considered carefully the ombudsman's first four recommendations, which involve considering whether to restore the lost pension rights of affected scheme members, making consolatory payments and apologising to scheme trustees. As I have already made clear, the Government are unable to accept the findings on which those recommendations are based. We do not believe that the findings of maladministration can be supported by the facts. It simply cannot be right that the losses from the schemes that have collapsed should be met by the taxpayer without establishing any causal connection between the actions criticised in the ombudsman's report and the losses that people have incurred. The report fails to establish that connection.
	Indeed, in respect of the ombudsman's fourth recommendation, relating to schemes that began to wind up between April 2004 and April 2005, the report itself acknowledges that the individuals concerned could be said to have had the opportunity to take whatever action they could to mitigate their potential loss. I do not consider that it would be in the wider public interest for Government to accept that very substantial liability on behalf of taxpayers. We calculate that liability as being in the range of £13 billion and £17 billion in cash terms over the next 60 years. We estimate that the administration costs would be in the region of a further £20 million each year. We do not therefore intend to take the actions recommended by the ombudsman. The taxpayer cannot be asked to accept the responsibility for effectively underwriting the value of private investments in the way the report suggests.
	The Government do, however, accept the ombudsman's fifth recommendation with regard to reviewing the time that it takes to wind up a defined benefit pension scheme. Work is already under way in this area, and we will set out our proposals for how we intend to proceed when that work is completed.
	I would like to finish by making two things absolutely clear. First, this Government have been the first to accept the moral and social obligation to make sure that as many as possible of those who have suffered hardship and distress in these circumstances receive financial support. That is why this Government have set up the financial assistance scheme, with £400 million of public money. The scheme is designed to provide help to those who have lost the most and who are in the greatest need—those closest to retirement and who are therefore least able to make alternative provision. The scheme will currently help up to 15,000 people who have faced significant occupational pension losses. [Interruption.]

Philip Hammond: May I start with the bit that the Secretary of State missed out? On behalf of Opposition Members, I should like to express my sympathy for the 85,000 people who have lost their pensions through occupational pension scheme failures. Those are decent people who set out to do the right thing to try to ensure a decent retirement for themselves, and they have seen their dreams of a comfortable and secure retirement cruelly shattered. Their plight is not only a series of personal tragedies, but a tragedy for the cause of increased pension saving as confidence in the system is further undermined.
	The ombudsman's report specifically addresses misleading information by Government, but let us not forget the context. In spite of any amount of dodgy information, the problem would never have arisen if the pension funds in question had not failed. The Government must accept their share of responsibility for those failures, as well as for the information that misled people about the consequences. It was this Government who reduced the minimum funding requirement for occupational pension schemes. It was this Government and the present Chancellor who raided pension funds and are still raiding pension funds, to the tune of £5 billion a year with his pension stealth tax, equivalent to £120 billion of capital value wiped off pension funds.
	So the Government stand accused not only of misleading about the consequences of the failure of occupational pension funds, but of helping to precipitate that failure. On the first count the ombudsman, an official of Parliament charged with the task of reporting to Parliament on claims of maladministration, has investigated and found that maladministration has occurred. What is the Government's response? A direct challenge to the authority of Parliament. The accused in the dock has decided that he will be judge and jury in his own case. He has just spent 10 minutes of his 15-minute statement going over the case again and telling us that the ombudsman, an Officer of the House, got her findings wrong.
	The ombudsman rightly replies to the right hon. Gentleman that
	"Parliament has decided that it is my role—and not that of any party to a complaint—to determine what constitutes maladministration."
	The House must insist that the Government bow to the decision arrived at by the due process which the House put in place in respect of the factual finding of maladministration by the ombudsman. While they are at it, the Government could also comply with the ombudsman's recommendation that they apologise. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman's mother ever taught him this, but my mother always taught me that an apology costs nothing.
	The real problem for the Government is that the right hon. Member for Edinburgh, South-West (Mr. Darling), then Secretary of State for Social Security, and the present Secretary of State for Transport, has already committed the Government to the principle of redress. In March 2000 he told the House that:
	"As a matter of principle, we believe that when someone loses out because they were given the wrong information by a Department, they are entitled to redress."—[Official Report, 15 March 2000; Vol. 346, c. 308.]
	The Secretary of State has sold the pass, leaving Ministers in the ridiculous position of trying to deny the ombudsman's findings of maladministration because that would-be Chancellor of the Exchequer has already committed them to providing redress in those circumstances.
	Surprisingly, yesterday at Prime Minister's questions, the right hon. Gentleman was rather more honest about the situation. He did not say the ombudsman was wrong. He did not question her findings of maladministration. He simply told the House that the Government could not pay what he claimed would be a £15 billion bill.
	However, the ombudsman's principal recommendation was that the Government should consider whether they should make arrangements for the restoration of the pensions and other benefits of those who had lost out, in her words
	"by whichever means is most appropriate".
	The Prime Minister said yesterday that the Government
	"have to look for another way of dealing with the issue"—[Official Report, 15 March 2006; Vol. 443, c. 1456.]
	The obvious way, to which the Secretary of State alluded, is the financial assistance scheme, which was put in place to help people who lost their pensions or suffered diminished pensions because their pension funds had failed. I welcome what the right hon. Gentleman said about his willingness to look again at the way the financial assistance scheme works. At present, it does not work. It is limited to people who are already retired or who are within three years of retirement age when the scheme fails. It is slow and cumbersome. Only 27 people have received payments from the scheme, out of 85,000 people who have lost their pensions or suffered diminution of their pensions. The fund is clearly underfunded for its stated purpose, having only £20 million a year at its disposal.
	Will the Secretary of State as a matter of urgency look at how the financial assistance scheme can be reconstructed to help a much wider group of people who have suffered loss of pension rights through no fault of their own? He said in his statement that it would be wrong for the whole burden to fall on the taxpayer. With that thought in mind, will he consider the possible use of unclaimed assets, in particular unclaimed pension and insurance assets, to see whether those could be used to support an expanded financial assistance scheme?
	When we proposed that last year, the Chancellor said that those assets did not exist, but since the general election he has discovered them and earmarked some of them for one of his own pet schemes. It would be a more appropriate use of unclaimed assets in the pension and insurance sector to use them to fund failures in that sector. I urge the right hon. Gentleman to ask his colleagues at the Treasury to embark upon a serious piece of work to identify the extent and scope of those assets, to see whether they could contribute towards a remedy of the situation.
	When the Secretary of State is talking to his right hon. Friend the Chancellor about additional funding for the financial assistance scheme, will he remind him of the £45 billion that he has had so far from pension funds with his pension stealth tax, and the £5 billion a year that he continues to levy on those pension funds, even as the system is collapsing about his ears? Will he remind the Chancellor of the pension fund failures and the misery suffered by tens of thousands of individual stakeholders in consequence?
	Both the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State have used the figure of £15 billion. The Secretary of State today spoke of £13 billion to £17 billion. That is a cash figure and it is meaningless. Will he make a commitment today to put in the Library for the benefit of all Members a properly worked out net present value figure for the cost of making good the pension funds, so that Members can understand what the real figure is, not the hyped-up figure that he and the Prime Minister have been using?
	The Government must accept without further delay the ombudsman's factual finding of maladministration. If they do not, the authority of Parliament and the credibility of the ombudsman's office will be critically undermined. The right hon. Member for Edinburgh, South-West had already committed them to the principle of redress in these circumstances, but the ombudsman's recommendations leave scope for examining various ways to deliver that redress—through the financial assistance scheme, or perhaps by revisiting the use of unclaimed assets, as I suggested. The commitment to redress, in whichever form, has already been made by the right hon. Gentleman on behalf of the Government, so Ministers cannot duck it by refusing to accept the ombudsman's finding of fact. It is for the Government to deliver on that commitment, and a great deal is at stake. With national pensions day ahead of us this Saturday, and the Government's response to the Turner report eagerly awaited in the spring, if the Government get this wrong and send the wrong signal about the security and safety of pension funds to the British public, there is a real danger that efforts to address Britain's pension crisis by promoting pension saving will be fatally undermined before they even get off the starting blocks.

John Hutton: I agree, in some respects, with what the hon. Gentleman has said. It is important that we establish proper arrangements for confirming the security and confidence that people have in their pension investments and pension savings. We have taken action to try to strengthen those arrangements, and I am confident that we have succeeded.
	I also welcome the hon. Gentleman's support for what I have said about the financial assistance scheme, which is the right way to see what further help, if any, we can provide for pensioners who are caught in that particularly difficult situation. I have listened to his expressions of concern and sympathy, which we all feel, but many people in the country will regard that as crocodile tears. [Interruption.] It is important to make that point because his party had plenty of opportunities to devise a similar compensation or assistance scheme, which it completely failed to do. It is all well and good for him to express his concern, but no financial assistance scheme was previously available. [Interruption.] He referred to when pension schemes started failing, but he clearly knows nothing about the issue, because it is utterly ridiculous to suggest that pension schemes suddenly started to collapse in 1997. We have implemented the necessary provisions and are examining further help.
	The hon. Gentleman has referred to unclaimed assets, which are obviously a matter for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, and the £5 billion figure. Since 1997, there have been two significant impacts on pension funds: first, rising life expectancy has increased the costs of UK pension funds by some £250 billion; and secondly, the fall in world stock markets at the end of the 1990s had a similar impact. [Interruption.] Conservative Members do not like it because they do not like the facts of the matter and are not prepared to listen.

John Hutton: Recent research shows that the figure was never £5 billion. The sum was accompanied by tax cuts for business, and it may well be not much more than half of the widely quoted figure.
	Finally, the hon. Gentleman argued that Governments must always accept the findings of the parliamentary commissioner, but that was certainly not the way in which the previous Tory Government used to respond. I simply draw his attention to his party's rejection of the Barlow Clowes report. If he wants to be credible, he must be consistent, but he has no consistency whatsoever.

David Laws: I am grateful to the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement, but I fear that his response to the ombudsman's report will have created even greater anger and an even greater sense of betrayal among those people who have lost their pensions. As I understand it, the essence of his statement is that he believes that the Government have got more or less everything right and that the ombudsman has got more or less everything wrong. With respect, his Department has had a chance to put those points to the ombudsman over the past few months, and I remind him of her conclusion:
	"I have found that maladministration was a significant contributory factor in the creation of financial loss . . . Nothing in the DWP's submissions persuades me otherwise."
	As the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) has pointed out, paragraph 7.26 of the ombudsman's report states:
	"Parliament has decided that it is my role—and not that of any party to a complaint—to determine what constitutes maladministration".
	If the Government are going to trample over the ombudsman's report, what is the point in having a parliamentary ombudsman and giving her those responsibilities? I hope that Committees of this House, including the Public Administration Committee, will take up the way in which the DWP has dealt with the report.
	Does the Secretary of State agree that those people who have lost their pensions will now feel doubly betrayed, not only because of what originally happened, but because of the way in which the Government have dealt with the report, which comprehensively condemns the Government and states that they provided information that was
	"inaccurate, incomplete, unclear and inconsistent"?
	Is the defence in the DWP response to the ombudsman's report—that many people will not have bothered to read those leaflets or that those who have read them will not have paid any attention to them—good enough? One wonders why the Government bother to distribute such leaflets, if people are not supposed to read them or pay attention to them. The Secretary of State's statement was peppered with the excuse that people should have read the small print in the leaflets, but that is the approach of a dodgy second-hand car dealer, which one would not expect from a Secretary of State charged with regulating such matters.
	On cost, I share the concern expressed by the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge about the £15 billion figure that the Prime Minister has been waving around, and I want a clear commitment that the Secretary of State will put an explanation in the Library. I also want a clear commitment that the Secretary of State is not going to fob off people with a token increase in the FAS, when a more substantive measure, such as extending the protections in the Pension Protection Fund to people who are currently losing out in relation to the ombudsman's report and the existing FAS, is clearly needed. Will he tell us the cost of such action? Is that not precisely the type of expenditure that should fall to the contingency reserve? Given that this Government can find billions of pounds to fund an unjustified war in Iraq, surely they can find the money out of the reserve to fund such compensation.
	As a Minister told the House of Commons in 2000:
	"We are aware of the importance of protecting members' rights . . . If we cannot do that, they have no one else to look to".—[Official Report, 3 April 2000; Vol. 366, c. 765.]
	What has changed? Why do Ministers now say that they are not responsible for protecting those rights and that members must look only to employers or trustees? Surely that approach not only betrays those people who have lost their pensions, but undermines the Government strategy to encourage millions more people to take up second pensions. The ombudsman, who obviously has a sense of irony, has entitled her report, "Trusting in the Pensions Promise". Does the Secretary of State understand that if he deals with the ombudsman's report in that way, people will not trust this Government's pensions policy?

John Denham: My right hon. Friend talked about extending the financial assistance scheme. When he does that, will he bear in mind that there is a group of schemes, including the APW scheme in Hampshire, in which the employer is still solvent, but the trustees were effectively forced into compromise with no option, with the loss of a significant part of individuals' pensions? So far, the Government have set their face against extending the financial assistance scheme to schemes such as APW. Will he give me an assurance that in the review that is taking place he will look afresh at that group of schemes to see whether assistance can be offered, because those people have suffered just as much as anybody else, and through no fault of their own?

John Hutton: I fully accept what my right hon. Friend says. This is a very difficult group of cases, and I pay tribute to the work that he has done in drawing our attention to them. We will need to have another look at it as part of the review, but I am afraid that I am not holding out any promise to him that we will be able to make progress in this particular area. However, I assure him that we will take another look at it and see what further help, if any, we are able to give.

John Hutton: I have made it clear that no Government can take responsibility for underwriting the total value of people's private savings. That is impossible and untenable. The Pension Protection Fund and the new powers of the pensions regulator mean that we have a much stronger regulatory environment to deal with the point that Conservative and Liberal Democrat Front Benchers made about securing confidence in the future. That is essential, and the Government are determined to do that.

Kali Mountford: In my view, ordinary people's typical behaviour when making what they perceive as an ordinary decision in ordinary circumstances is at the heart of the matter. Will my right hon. Friend therefore further consider how those people can be quickly supported through the financial assistance scheme, so that those who are retiring imminently or fairly soon have some assurance about their immediate future? Will he also consider the advice that ordinary people are given in what they perceive to be in ordinary circumstances? Will he examine how advice is published—I have asked for that on previous occasions—so that such situations can be avoided in future?

Richard Burden: I welcome my right hon. Friend's restatement of his willingness to review the financial assistance scheme. For my constituents who are workers or former workers at Kalamazoo, time is of the essence. Given the current timetable for the comprehensive spending review, it may leave many people in appalling positions. Will he therefore say a little more about the possibility of expediting the review? Given that the situation requires substantial amounts of money, will he speak to appropriate firms and bodies in the financial sector to ascertain whether, even at this late stage, there may be mileage in considering not purchasing annuities and pooling the schemes' assets to ensure that money can be front-loaded and the cost can be spread over the maximum period?

Paul Goodman: Since 1995, public sector pensions, including ours and Ministers pensions, have become relatively more secure, but private sector pensions—partly because of the £45 billion tax on pension funds—have got relatively less secure. Given that context, does not the Secretary of State acknowledge that my constituents and others will greet effectively overriding the judge's verdict on maladministration with incredulity?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We must now move on the main business.

Charles Clarke: I beg to move, That this House insists on its disagreement with the Lords in their amendments Nos. 16 and 22, and proposes the Government amendments (a) and (b) in lieu thereof.
	The amendments are technical amendments to clause 8, making it clear that an application for an identity card must include or accompany one to be entered on the national identity register. We have already had one debate on the Lords amendments this week, on Monday 13 March, when the House rejected them for the second time. However, their Lordships have again insisted on their amendments to remove the requirement for anyone obtaining a designated document such as a passport to register and be issued with an identity card.
	Yesterday, in the other place, the mover of the main Lords amendment, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, rebuked me in his summation in the following terms:
	"The other thing worth saying is that last Monday, the Home Secretary . . . in levelling his defence against our proposal to make the scheme voluntary, did not in any sense call upon the constitutional justification of the Commons' position that has been the mainstay of the noble Baroness's closing speech"
	—he was referring to Baroness Scotland of Asthal—
	"and has been the subject of speeches from various noble Lords. Mr Clarke attempted to justify the Government's case according to the issues that he raised in the other place—none of them were constitutional issues; they related to the merits and demerits of this Bill.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 15 March 2006; Vol. 679, c. 1248–49.]
	I intend to remedy that defect in my presentation today. Let me start with what was said by Lord Strathclyde, the leader of the main Opposition party in the Lords. He spoke very wisely, as befits a graduate of the university of East Anglia. He said:
	"This House should always proceed with caution when it is trying to defeat the Government, even when it is asking the House of Commons to think again on a Bill it has passed. Generally speaking, we do that. I think we always do that. What is so unusual about this aspect is that the Government have already been defeated on two occasions, and therefore this is the third occasion on which we are dealing with this matter.
	In this context, perhaps I may make three points. First, I think the House should proceed with caution and should deal with matters as controversial as this only when they are very few in number. This is the first time in this Session that we have come to an issue of this kind. Secondly, we should proceed only on an issue where there is a good deal of public support for what this House is doing. Thirdly, we should not proceed if there are issues to do with the Salisbury convention. My noble Friend and the Government may disagree about the use of the Salisbury convention; I am entirely satisfied that there are no Salisbury convention implications if the House were to return this small point back to another place."
	I shall deal with each of those three points. The first was that the House of Lords should proceed with caution. I think that Lord Strathclyde was quite right about that, and he should take his own advice. The fact is that the amendment is not a small point. It constitutes a major and deliberate effort by the Opposition parties to sabotage the whole of a Bill that has been agreed by this House, and that was set out to the public during the general election campaign. I hope that the Lords will indeed proceed with caution, and will not adopt a strategy that is designed to undermine the entire Bill.
	Secondly, Lord Strathclyde said that the other place
	"should proceed only on an issue where there is a good deal of public support for what this House is doing."
	I remind the House—and perhaps, via this House, the other place—of the facts about public support. There is not such support for what the House of Lords is doing. Even the result of the latest opinion poll sponsored by the NO2ID campaign shows that 52 per cent. of the public are in favour, while Home Office research shows that 70 per cent. are in favour.
	Lord Strathclyde said that the other place
	"should proceed only on an issue where there is a good deal of public support for what this House is doing."
	According to the NO2ID campaign, 52 per cent. of people are in favour of the identity cards and against what the other place is doing; and, as I have said, Home Office research shows that 70 per cent. are in favour.
	The Conservative election manifesto was entirely silent on the matter, although the then leader of the party was a known supporter of identity cards. However, the findings of an opinion poll published by ICM before the election, in December 2004, show that some 80 per cent. of the public were then in favour of the introduction of identity cards, with 88 per cent. of Conservative supporters, 81 per cent. of Labour supporters and 72 per cent. of Liberal Democrat supporters in favour. So the answer to Lord Strathclyde's second point—that the Lords should block the will of this elected Chamber only if there is clear public support—is that there is not.

Charles Clarke: I accept the first point, but not the second. Because of the debate about these issues and because the precise questions are different in different polling data, there is an issue concerning public support that needs to be addressed. That is a major part of the proposal, and my hon. Friend is right to raise it. Lord Strathclyde's second point was narrow, but important. It is; is there
	"a good deal of public support"
	for the House of Lords to overturn the elected House consistently on these matters? I contend that there is not.

Charles Clarke: No, I will not; I want to deal first with Lord Strathclyde's third point. He said that the House of Lords
	should not proceed if there are issues to do with the Salisbury convention."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 15 March 2006; Vol.679. c. 1244–45.]
	That is a very important point and it is worth recalling what the position is. First, it is absolutely clear that the introduction of ID cards is a manifesto commitment that has been approved twice by the elected House. I remind Members of the view of the Salisbury convention taken in January 2000 by the royal commission on the reform of the House of Lords. It was chaired by Lord Wakeham, who is not a notable Government toady, except when the Conservatives were in government. Recommendation 7 of commission's report states:
	"The principles underlying the 'Salisbury Convention' remain valid and should be maintained. A version of the 'mandate' doctrine should continue to be observed; where the electorate has chosen a party to form a Government, the elements of that party's general election manifesto should be respected by the second chamber. More generally"—

Charles Clarke: I will complete the quotation:
	"More generally, the second chamber should be cautious about challenging the clearly expressed views of the House of Commons on any public policy issue. It is not possible to reduce this to a simple formula, particularly one based on manifesto commitments."
	I argue, therefore, that that doctrine exists and that it addresses the point made by the Lord Strathclyde.

Kali Mountford: Does the Home Secretary recall that when the Chief Secretary to the Treasury was a Home Office Minister, he told this House that it was absolutely clear that ID cards would start on a voluntary basis, leading to compulsion? Indeed, such statements were made before the general election and therefore must be taken into account as part of the manifesto. Does that not make this House's position absolutely clear?

Anne Snelgrove: As my right hon. Friend knows, I was vice-chair of the Labour party's national policy forum in the run-up to last year's general election and as such, I took a close interest in the manifesto's development. I am pleased to remind him, and ask him to confirm, that that manifesto said that we
	"would introduce ID cards, including biometric data like fingerprints, backed up by a national register and rolling out initially on a voluntary basis as people renewed their passports".
	So it is in our manifesto.

Charles Clarke: I shall deal with that point in a moment, but the basic fact is that the biometric data being collected for passports on this basis are broadly the same as those which will be collected for the ID card system. It is absurd, not to mention costly, to have the double process that the Lords want.

Martin Linton: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that name, date and place of birth, address and nationality are the only personal information required on the national identity register? All of that information and more is already required for the passport application, so does he agree that the House of Lords is fighting on what is a very narrow point? The issue is simply whether identical information collected for the passport office register can or cannot be transferred to a national identity register.

Simon Hughes: The Home Secretary referred to our exchange on Monday. If Lord Strathclyde is right to say that the Lords should act only when there is a significant amount of public support, may I remind the right hon. Gentleman that the latest poll that he cited shows that public support for the position taken by the Lords is 10 per cent. higher than was the support for his party at the general election? The numbers in respect of the share of those who voted are about the same, so he surely cannot argue that the Government are justified on this issue, and that the House of Lords is not this?

David Davis: The Home Secretary wants to represent the process in which we are engaged today as a clash between the House of Lords and the democratic will of the people, as represented by the Government. Put to one side the fact that this House of Lords is, after eight years, effectively the Government's creation, and that the opposition to this aspect of the Bill is driven by a belief in the ancient liberties of the British people. The right hon. Gentleman gave us some numbers, but they demonstrate that that belief transcends party. It drives an opposition that encompasses all parties, including Cross Benchers—

David Davis: I will in a moment, the hon. Lady need not worry. To do that, the right hon. Gentleman is forced to the ludicrous assertion that passports are somehow voluntary too. He said that, in terms, the other day.
	Later this year, the World Cup tournament will be held in Germany. When I travel there to support the England team, and I tell the German immigration office, "I've not brought my passport because the Home Secretary tells me it's voluntary," I am sure that that officer will be very understanding.

David Davis: We'll come back to that in a minute. I am getting heckled by the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), and I shall give way to him in a moment, when he will learn about heckling. I am sure that I will be treated very sympathetically by the German immigration service. When I am eventually let out of prison and I return to Britain, I am sure that I shall have no trouble getting back in without a passport.
	It is, of course, ridiculous to assert that passports are voluntary. Perhaps what the Home Secretary means is that foreign travel is voluntary, which is what the Under-Secretary said from a sedentary position. I think that that is what the Government are trying to say.
	I suppose that we can also put to one side the disgraceful idea that British citizens, of all people, can leave their own country only if they agree to let the Government intrude on their privacy, on a scale unprecedented in British history. However, does he really believe that foreign travel is voluntary for business men whose customers are all abroad? Does he think that travel is voluntary for people whose parents or children live abroad, as is increasingly the case today? Does he think that foreign travel is voluntary for people whose children get in trouble abroad—something that we have read about too often in the past few months and years? [Interruption.] Does the Under-Secretary of State want to intervene? If so, I shall give way.

David Heath: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman giving way. He is making a very important point, but I want to add a small one. When he goes to the World Cup, he will not manage to get as far as Germany. Civil aviation regulations mean that it is compulsory for people to have passports before they get on a plane.

John Bercow: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. He will have noted, as the House will have done, that the hon. Member for South Swindon (Anne Snelgrove) a few moments ago used the word "understood" in respect of the Labour manifesto. Does he accept that the hon. Lady has invented a new constitutional doctrine, that the purpose of a manifesto is not to communicate a clear message to the electorate, but to communicate internally to party colleagues in the doublespeak that only they understand? Will he confirm that establishing what proportion of the electorate thought that the return of a Labour Government would mean compulsory ID cards would require several noughts after the decimal point before one reached a positive figure?

David Davis: No, I shall not. I must make some progress. I may give way to the hon. Gentleman in a moment, but I am not sure.
	We can see that the Government's proposal is clearly in breach of their own manifesto, unless one takes the attitude that the manifesto did not mean to say that or that that is not what they understood it to mean—but the words mean what they mean. This part of the Bill is not the exercise of a democratic mandate. The best that can be said of it is that it is an exercise in elected dictatorship, full stop. So the Lords are right to amend it and they are entirely within their rights. That point destroys the entire speech that the Home Secretary just made.
	We have continually been treated by the Home Secretary and his Ministers—sometimes from a sedentary position, but mostly on the "Today" programme—to new reasons for this legislation, be they terrorism, welfare reform, immigration or fraud. One Minister puts up a reason for the idea, only for another honest Minister to admit that the Government have overstated their case. That has happened several times in the course of argument over the Bill. That is followed by another Minister coming up with another argument, which is also overstated. That has been most obviously the case on terrorism.
	The Government love to portray everybody except themselves as soft on terrorism. It is their favourite tactic with all of their illiberal legislation. Time and again, impositions are placed on the British people, that they have not faced for centuries, on the basis of arguments that are designed to make other people, the Government think, look soft on terrorism. That has applied most obviously to this legislation. I want the House to listen to the words of Baroness Park of Monmouth. The House should remember that Daphne Park has worked in the defence of our country in some of the most dangerous postings in the word. She has taken more risks in the defence of our country than the Home Secretary has had hot dinners, and that is a pretty high hurdle. I would trust her judgment on the defence of the realm way beyond that of the Prime Minister or, indeed, any Minister. Yesterday she said:
	"The very creation of such an enormous national identity register will be a present to terrorists; it will be a splendid thing for them to disrupt . . . . It will also provide valuable information to organised crime and to the intelligence services of unfriendly countries".—[Official Report, House of Lords, 15 March 2006; Vol. 679, c. 1234.]
	So much for our national security.

John Redwood: My right hon. Friend is making a powerful case, as always. Could he speculate on why so few peers support the Government on this, given how many new peers have been invited into the House of Lords under this Administration with this very generous Prime Minister? Could it be because they think that they Government have a lousy case?

David Davis: Certainly not. The Under-Secretary, who sits and heckles, gets it all wrong, and will not take part in the debate, now wants to take part on an à la carte basis. This is a table d'hôte proposal by the Government and they are going to get a table d'hôte response from me. The latest argument is the ludicrous—I use that word advisedly—assertion by the Home Secretary that having an ID card will limit the intrusions of the state upon the person. That is an extraordinary argument.
	If that were not daft enough, the Home Secretary tells us that citizens will find having an ID card useful, and even valuable. The technology director of Microsoft, no less, pointed out that the identity register will be a honeypot for hackers, fraudsters, thieves and terrorists. It will worsen the risk of identity theft. Far from being an infallible security system, we hear this week that the Government intend to rely on chip and pin technology to protect the card, the same technology that we have used for years in the common, everyday Visa card. So much for improving our personal security.

David Davis: No, I will not. The hon. Gentleman had his chance, and he has missed it.

David Davis: I want to come to a close on this.
	If an ID card were really valuable to the citizen as the Home Secretary claims, presumably ordinary citizens would want them; everybody would want them if they were as valuable as the Home Secretary claims. So why are the Government not willing to leave citizens to make decisions for themselves? If cards are going to be popular, if they are going to make people happy, if they are going to do things for them, then they will take them up of their own accord. What we are talking about today is the compulsion issue—they will not need to be compelled to have an ID card. Of course, the Government do not believe their own argument. That became clear in the Home Secretary's view of this amendment.

Mark Fisher: As always, my hon. Friend makes good sense. She goes to the essence of the matter. This is not a proper voluntary scheme; it is compulsory, which is the only way that it can work.
	Will the Home Secretary listen to the other place, and to the public, and trust his own judgment? If, as he believes, he can convince the public of the importance of identity cards, he should trust them and let them volunteer for the scheme. The Bill does not trust the public; in effect, it asks them to be compelled to sign up for the cards.

Chris Bryant: The hon. Gentleman refers to the anniversary of Dunblane. Last Saturday was the second anniversary of the Atocha bombings in Madrid. He knows perfectly well that because possession of an ID card is mandatory in Spain in order to have a mobile phone, that made it possible for the Spanish authorities to secure prosecutions.

Nicholas Clegg: I should like to make some progress since time is short.
	Ramming through illiberal legislation to no obvious end, while failing to honour pledges made to the families of victims of murder over 10 years ago, reveals the extent to which the Government appear to have lost any sense of proportion, any clear sense of priorities, on this as on so many areas of public policy. I urge those in all parts of the House, and those following this debate in the other place, to reject the Government's motion to disagree with the Lords' excellent amendment.

George Howarth: I did not actually accuse the right hon. Gentleman of misleading the House; I accused him of sophistry, and he has compounded that in the intervention that he just made.
	It would be outrageous if the House of Lords were to reject the Government's proposals in the Bill one more time, and frankly, it would be playing into the hands of people like me who believe that it should be abolished anyway.

Tony Baldry: What the Lords amendments do, and what Opposition Members want to do, is very simple: we want it to be voluntary, those on the Labour Benches want it to be compulsory.

Laura Moffatt: I suspect that many of my constituents—I do not choose to speak on behalf of other hon. Member's constituents, as has been done in the House—consider the debate with absolute dismay, as those of us who engaged with our constituents and surveyed and invited comments know. The numbers in my constituency were overwhelmingly in favour of an identity card, and they continue to be so. My constituents will know, having had an opportunity to see the debate, that there is another motive behind the Opposition supporting the other House in its attempt.
	The reason why I absolutely depart from some of the spurious arguments on why the Bill should not proceed is that I hear the same Opposition Members who argue for clarity in databases and say that we must have a single database—I cite child protection and many other issues that are before the House—using an entirely separate argument in this case.
	It being one hour after the commencement of proceedings Mr. Deputy Speaker put forthwith the Question already proposed from the Chair, pursuant to Order [13 February 2006].

Charles Clarke: The effect of my motion is simple. It effectively reinstates the wording which this House has previously decided on and rejects the attempts of the other place to remove all references to glorification from the Bill. I can be brief in my remarks because I set out in detail what was wrong with the amendments made by another place when we last discussed the issue on 15 February, and I do not intend to return to that debate.
	I am pleased to say that one objection to those amendments has been removed. The hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) has perhaps realised that his assertion that he was
	"not wholly persuaded by the argument that listening cannot encompass reading."—[Official Report, 15 February 2006; Vol. 442, c. 1435.]
	is not really sustainable. I accept that today's amendments from the Opposition parties do at least seek to remedy the weakness that we reflected in the debate that we had last time, but the reference solely to "listener" was not the only thing that was wrong with the amendments.
	The amendments from the other place are defective because instead of containing an exemplary description of what "indirect encouragement" could be, they provide an exhaustive description. In other words, the offence is limited so that it is committed by making available to the public a statement directly encouraging terrorism, or a statement indirectly encouraging it but only by actually describing it in such a way that the listener will infer that he should emulate it. To put that simply, the use of the word "describing" in the Lords amendments means that the Bill would not catch, as the original wording would, glorification, praise or celebration of an act of terrorism that does not actually describe the act. Although the amendments that have now been tabled by the Opposition parties do not rely on the word "describing", the same type of objection still applies to them. The use of the word "comprises" makes them exhaustive.

Charles Clarke: I am grateful for that explanation. Trying to help the Prime Minister's ego is a new task for Opposition spokespeople. I am delighted that they are diverting their energies to that.
	What of the Liberal Democrats? No one—including them, probably—has any idea where they stand. On Tuesday they were with the Conservatives in accepting "glorifying". On Wednesday they had parted company from the Conservatives, but today they are back with the Conservatives and opposing "glorifying". It is such typical behaviour from the Liberal Democrats that perhaps it is not worth considering.
	The case for including glorification is strong. It is a clear and well understood English word that captures better than any other word some of the conduct that we are trying to deal with in the Bill. As I have said, I imagine that that is why the press have picked up and focused on the word. They know what it means and they know that their readers understand it. It was and, I hope, will be perfectly clear in the Bill for the sake of the courts. It is also a word that the nations of the world were prepared to accept last September when they voted to adopt UN Security Council resolution 1624, which features that word. We should uphold it in Parliament.
	As I have also pointed out before, in light of the attention given to the issue of glorification, if we were now to remove it from the Bill the courts would be fully justified in reaching one obvious conclusion—that Parliament did not intend glorification of terrorism to fall within the scope of the encouragement offence. If any hon. Members doubt that, they may like to read a judgment given by the Lords of Appeal only last week. In the course of his remarks, Lord Bingham of Cornhill said:
	"There is no warrant for treating Parliament as having meant something it did not say".
	That clarification, given in the case Regina on application of Gillan and another v Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis and another, which was given 8 March, should cause all of us to be clear that if we take out the word "glorification", there will be understanding of that in the court when the legislation comes through.

Charles Clarke: No, not at the moment.
	The reason why the Government believe that we need to deal with glorification in our law is clear. People who glorify terrorism help to create a climate in which terrorism is regarded as acceptable. They help to persuade impressionable members of their audiences that they have a moral duty to kill innocent people in pursuit of whatever ideology they have espoused.
	In recent times, we have seen threats from extremists who claim to represent Islam. Leaders of the Muslim community in the UK and elsewhere have quite properly and very strongly made it clear that such views do not represent true Islam. However, there are, nevertheless, people who may be influenced by those who glorify terrorism and conclude that they have a duty to kill and injure innocent bystanders in the misguided belief that they are bound to do so.
	I should also remind the House that glorification features in the Bill as an example of what is encompassed by the concept of indirect encouragement. It is not self-contained. Glorification as an offence is a subset of indirect encouragement as an offence, and can be committed only if the conditions surrounding the main offence are met. Key among those conditions is the requirement that there must be an intention that others should be induced to commit terrorist offences or subjective recklessness on this point. Glorification without intention of emulation or subjective recklessness cannot constitute an offence.

Dominic Grieve: I rise to respond to the Home Secretary and to speak to amendments (b) and (a) to his amendment in lieu.
	The Home Secretary has failed to explain the scope of his proposal, from which flows a large number of the problems with which the House is grappling. He came close to touching on that matter a moment ago, but whenever he comes close to it, he veers off, because an explanation would make nonsense of the Government's entire argument.
	The glorification of terrorism is not being made an offence, thank goodness. If the glorification of terrorism on its own were made an offence, it would mean, as we have said on many occasions, that anybody who celebrates Robin Hood, the peasants revolt or Spartacus would be liable to prosecution. Furthermore, the poor old Taoiseach would be liable to prosecution when he comes over here after celebrating the Easter rising next month in Dublin, which he intends to do. Mercifully, that is not the Government's objective.
	The Government's approach must be based on the Prime Minister's ego, because there is no other rational explanation. Having produced a Bill which contains draconian and powerful provisions to criminalise the indirect encouragement of terrorism—something that we support—the Home Secretary has insisted on including in clause 1(4) a most extraordinary subsection, which suggests that the courts should have particular regard to an example that he is offering, which is the possibility that glorification falls within the scope of indirect encouragement. At the same time, he has provided the suggestion that members of the public would reasonably be expected to infer that what is being glorified is being glorified as conduct that should be emulated by them in existing circumstances—I think that the Taoiseach would still be in some difficulty, because quite a few people in Northern Ireland think that any celebration of the Easter rising does exactly that.
	The key point is that every single judge and lawyer to whom I have spoken has highlighted that including such a concept is woolly, opaque and unclear, that the word, "glorify", is not known in our law and that the definition of "glorify" as praise or celebration is very poor. The provision appears to be deliberately aimed at people who might wish to celebrate as part of their culture episodes that would fall within the Government's catch-all definition of terrorism. Above all, it is entirely unnecessary in meeting the Government's objective, and the Home Secretary has said nothing this afternoon to explain why it needs to be included in the Bill.

Tobias Ellwood: Does my hon. Friend know whether, following the Danish embassy demonstrations, the police have come forward requesting any additional powers that they do not already have?

Dominic Grieve: The police certainly do not need additional powers to deal with a demonstration outside the Danish embassy. I was rather depressed to read today that although some prosecutions have been started, there are problems in identifying some of the people who participated because, of course, nobody was arrested at the time or shortly thereafter. That is a policing matter, but it is not exactly encouraging for those of us who wish to see that sort of behaviour stopped, something that I suspect is true of every single hon. Member, on both sides of this Chamber.

Dominic Grieve: If nobody knows who is holding up the placard because that person is wearing a dish dash in such a way that all that can be seen is his eyes, what possible use would an identity card be? I am afraid that Government Front Benchers are living in fantasy land as regards terrorist offences, and one need only engage in any sort of debate for the fantasies that are besetting them to become increasingly apparent.
	I say this to the Home Secretary: we have genuinely been trying to see whether we can reach agreement with the Government on the problem that has been posed by the Prime Minister's ego and his slavish adherence to the word, "glorification". If one is French, that word does not feature in the debate at all, because the equivalent word is, "apologie", which means "vindication" and is entirely different. For those in the international community, the failure of this House to enact the glorification clause would not be the most seismic event ever, because what they actually want to see is terrorists and those who encourage terrorism brought to justice. That is the matter on which the House should be concentrating.
	Mindful of that, we tried to see whether we could reach some measure of agreement. That is why the amendments that I have tabled, on which, I am glad to say, we will be able to vote before voting on the Home Secretary's proposition, would provide the framework for doing that. The Home Secretary's suggestion that the word "listening" might not encompass viewing or reading struck me as having force. Indeed, if there had been an opportunity for a full debate and vote in the House of Lords, it might have been possible to do something about that there. That classically illustrates how our parliamentary procedure does not work very well. Here we have an opportunity to remedy that minor criticism.
	On top of that, as the Home Secretary will have noted, we have removed the word, "describing", in relation to terrorism because he said that it is possible to glorify terrorism without describing it—I think that it is quite difficult, but I can see that it is a drafting argument—and replaced it with the word, "referring". Can the Home Secretary give me any example of where it would be possible to glorify something without referring to it? I have to say that I do not think that that argument would get very far.

Jim Cousins: I am following the hon. Gentleman's arguments closely. What comfort does he draw from the clear statement by Baroness Scotland, who speaks for the Government on this issue in the other place? When she was asked by my right hon. Friend the noble Lord Clinton-Davis whether there would be an opportunity to revisit this matter soon, she conceded that there would be "bound to be" such an opportunity. What comfort does the hon. Gentleman draw from that?

Jeremy Corbyn: I shall be brief, for obvious reasons. I want the Lords to continue to oppose the inclusion of the word "glorification" on the face of the Bill. I am no more a supporter of criminal terrorist acts than is any other hon. Member, but using such loose wording in legislation could be very dangerous. It could lead to some very dangerous and perverse prosecutions.
	Earlier, the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) gave some examples of how that could happen. Over the years, I have been to many meetings when the virtues of the Easter rising have been extolled, and the speeches made at those meetings could well be construed as glorifying what some people would call a terrorist act. In my part of London, Sir Roger Casement is a figure of veneration, rather than of condemnation, and there is no doubt that that is true in many other places. I have also attended celebrations of India's independence day, when speakers have extolled the virtue of the various figures who played a part in bringing that about that independence. In certain circumstances, I am sure that those speakers could be prosecuted under the Bill.

Graham Stuart: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the House might be being too kind to the Government by assuming that they have a rationale for the use of the word "glorification" in the Bill? Is it not possible that the Government's aim has been to create an entirely artificial division in the mind of the public? The argument makes the Government appear to be strong on terrorism, while leaving everyone else who oppose the Govt—on the Conservative, Liberal Democrat or even Labour Benches—looking somehow weak on the matter. Does he agree that this dangerous legislation could have been introduced for such cynical reasons?

William Cash: I think not, and that is not because I suspect that my hon. Friend will raise a point that I had not thought of.
	With respect to the context of the use of the word "glorification", I entirely endorse my hon. Friend's view that the Prime Minister is on a bit of an ego trip. The Prime Minister has stuck closely to the assumption that the word has to remain in the Bill. The word is defined in various dictionaries and that, after all, is the only basis on which the courts can make a construction.
	For people who are concerned about the connection between glorification and terrorism in the Islamic context, the rather dangerous first definition—from the point of view that things could spin out of control—is that the word means to praise and worship God. Those who know and understand something about the meaning of Islam and the proper reverence attached to the word Allah will realise that it could mean that anybody who was found to have glorified God in that context would automatically find a conflation between God on the one hand and terrorism on the other. That is an extremely difficult area.
	I notice that the Home Secretary is chuntering and saying "Ridiculous". If he thinks that that was ridiculous, he should look at the dictionary. The courts will have to construe those words and that was the first definition given.

David Davies: My hon. Friend makes an important point and he is renowned for his interest in human rights. But I think that we have a right to ask ourselves how confident we can be that a measure that will impinge on freedom of speech should be passed by a Government who have probably lost the confidence of members of the public. Two days before the Queen's Speech in 2004, which was when this legislation was first mooted, the front page of the Daily Mail contained a headline about a hijack attempt on Canary Wharf by al-Qaeda operatives. I have looked in vain ever since for any evidence of arrests or of people being charged, but there has been absolutely none.
	I suggest to the Home Secretary that that article was deliberately placed into the Daily Mail before the Queen's Speech in a shoddy attempt to stoke up public opinion to get people to support this measure in the first place. [Interruption.] The Home Secretary laughs—so perhaps when he sums up, he will tell us whether or not the security services were briefed to talk to the Daily Mail. If the security services were briefed to talk to the Daily Mail, perhaps the Home Secretary could tell us why. If they were not briefed to do so, perhaps he could tell us why he did not order the same sort of investigation to hunt down the mole in MI5 or MI6 who spoke to the Daily Mail in exactly the same way that the Government shamefully hunted down—

Edward Garnier: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker, on Friday 3 March I raised a point of order with the Second Deputy Chairman in relation to an incident that took place at Nottingham East Midlands airport on 4 March. In response, the Second Deputy Chairman quite properly said that that was not a matter for him, but that he felt sure that the relevant Minister, namely one from the Department for Transport, would read what was said and would no doubt respond. I raised that point of order two weeks ago, and I have heard nothing since then, apart from noisy night flights out of that airport. Is there any way in which you can encourage the Minister with responsibility for aviation or one of the more senior Ministers in that Department to apply their mind to what is a serious problem and have the courtesy to this House and to a MP to respond?

Nick Herbert: I am grateful to my hon. Friend and agree with everything that he says. That is indeed the worry—where will the water come from in order to support the additional housing demand? I pay tribute to him for holding his infrastructure seminar tomorrow, at which leaders of the county councils and others will discuss the problem of the infrastructure deficit. That was also addressed by the private Member's Bill promoted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude), which West Sussex Members were delighted to support and which suggested that there should be a proper audit of the infrastructure requirements of a development before it goes ahead.
	The Weirwood reservoir is at about half its normal level, and the Environment Agency has confirmed that only one of the seven reservoirs serving the southern region is at normal levels for this time of year. That has a serious impact in several ways. First, it affects farming. The south-east is one of England's most important regions for arable farming and horticulture, which takes place in the south of my constituency. The drought is already causing concern as the key growing season looms. The Environment Agency's report, "Drought Prospects", published last month, set out three possible scenarios for the summer: average rainfall for February to April, 80 per cent. of the average during that period, or 60 per cent. of the average. The report stated that if the south-east were to receive only 60 per cent. of the average for this time of year,
	"Farmers would find groundwater and surface water sources to be very unreliable and could expect restrictions on spray irrigation".
	That will have a direct impact on the supplies of the food that they produce and on their profitability, which is already being challenged.
	Secondly, there is an environmental impact, including on local wildlife. Some of the finest wetland nature reserves in England are located in the south-east, such as Pulborough Brooks in my constituency. I suspect that the Minister may know about that. The ground is increasingly dry for the hundreds of pairs of lapwings and redshanks that traditionally breed in the south-east, and as flood plains dry out there are ever fewer places where these birds can breed and nest. At Pulborough Brooks reserve, just one pair of lapwings produced chicks last year, compared with 10 pairs in a normal year. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds believes that that is because of the drought.
	In terms of the prospect now confronting us, the Environment Agency has warned that water companies in the south-east, such as Southern Water, which largely serves my constituency, will need to do several things, all of which I wish to discuss. They include maintaining hosepipe bans, educating the public further about the severity of the drought, increased leakage control, and ensuring that their own drought plans are taken in good time. What worried me, and was one of the reasons why I called the debate, was the Environment Agency's comment that
	"Any delay increases the risk later in the year of extreme steps to manage public water supply, such as the introduction of standpipes and rota cuts".
	That public statement by the Environment Agency has begun to worry people who already face hosepipe bans in their households. I understand from a meeting that I had with Southern Water this week that it hopes that standpipes will not have to be introduced. However, the fact that the agency has warned of that underlines the need for further measures to deal with the problem.
	A hosepipe ban has already been in place in West Sussex for eight months. It is extraordinary to impose a hosepipe ban during the winter months. The current hosepipe bans affect more than 3.4 million people in the whole of the south-east. Following Thames Water's announcement of a hosepipe ban, that extension will affect another 3.5 million people. Folkestone and Dover Water has applied for water scarcity status and has become the first water company to be successful in being given the go-ahead to install compulsory water meters, as legislated for by the Water Industry Act 1999. I should like to explore the extent to which the Government are willing to see a further use of water meters and what impact they think that that will have on consumption and on some of the poorer households who may be adversely affected if there is a further move towards water metering.
	I want to deal specifically with the issue that my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) raised about population growth in the south-east.

Elliot Morley: I congratulate the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) on securing this debate and raising a series of important issues in relation to water supply. Water supply, which is heavily regulated, is a crucial part of the infrastructure of this country. We have had some bad droughts, and the hon. Gentleman referred to the last serious one, which affected Yorkshire Water badly. It was at the time when people were being urged to shower with a friend and take similar steps. I do not think we are quite in that situation yet.
	Measures have been introduced, particularly since the water summit of 1997, which was chaired by my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister. The 1999 legislation and the Water Act 2003 were designed to make sure that we do not have the major problems of severe water shortages that we have had in the past. That is not to say that we should be complacent. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that we have had some of the lowest rainfalls since 1921 in the south-east of England and we are facing what may be one of the worst droughts for nearly 100 years. There are serious issues, and water companies have a duty to put drought plans in place—I shall say a few words about those—and they have been responding responsibly.
	I want to touch upon a point raised by the hon. Gentleman and by my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Laura Moffatt), that of development. It is true that for development, it is necessary to have the infrastructure to go with it. I shall concentrate on water tonight, but that is not to say that I do not recognise that there are other issues, such as transport, roads, schools, and hospitals, that go with new development. They are addressed in the structural plans. However, whatever the argument about numbers, it is clear that there is an overwhelming need for more homes, particularly in the south-east. That desire for more homes, which is felt by the constituents of hon. Members who are in the Chamber this evening, is something that we as a Government, and local authorities, cannot ignore. It is also true that we have to approach new communities on the basis of sustainable communities. Planning for water is part of that.
	The hon. Gentleman asked what steps were being taken in relation to development to ensure that there will be an adequate water supply. The South East England regional assembly is about to submit the complete draft of the regional special strategy for the south-east, the south-east plan, to the Government. The plan is on course for submission on 31 March. It will then go through consultation, independent testing and public examination before being approved by the Government in 2008. That plan addresses the issue of water supply. Water companies are statutory consultees in relation to structure plans and planning authorities will be statutory consultees on water company resource plans. It is a two-way process so that both know what is going on.
	The Environment Agency, together with the water companies and the regional assembly, has undertaken modelling work on the impact of new house building on water supply. It has modelled six options based around the figures in the draft south-east plan and the impact of growth areas. It has concluded that a combination of supply and demand side interventions will mean that numbers can be accommodated. I want to make that clear. In relation to expansion of homes, numbers can be accommodated in terms of water resources.
	Interventions include an assumption on increasing water efficiency, and the possible construction of new reservoir infrastructure. New homes are much more water-efficient than existing stock, because of improvements in building regulations. The hon. Gentleman might be interested to know that the draft south-east plan, policy NRM2, sets out policy for a number of reservoirs. There are five in the draft plan. I have a list of all the reservoirs that are planned for the south-east. New reservoirs are planned for Southern Water at Broad Oak, for South East Water at Clay Hill, for Portsmouth Water Ltd.—which supplies part of Sussex—at Havant Thicket and for Thames Water at Abingdon. There are proposals to extend existing reservoirs. The plans include raising Bewl for Southern Water and Mid Kent Water, where the proposal is to raise the banks and increase capacity significantly, the Bray enlargement for South East Water and Abberton for Essex & Suffolk Water. I was in Essex recently, talking to the local water company. I know that raising the banks at Abberton will increase the reservoir's capacity by 60 per cent. I am sure that the effect will be similar at Bewl. There is also provision for water transfers within regions.
	I shall go through some of the measures introduced in the 2003 Act to manage future demand for water resources. They include time limits for all new abstraction licences; the facility to revoke without compensation abstraction licences where serious environmental damage has been caused, which relates to the point made by the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs about damage to river ecosystems; greater flexibility to raise or lower licensing thresholds according to local pressure on water resources; and the extension of licensing to abstractors of significant quantities who are not included in the current licensing system.
	Water company drought plans are a statutory requirement. Each water company must have plans to deal with drought, which has been helpful in dealing with the current situation. Water resource management plans are to become a statutory requirement. Consultation on the regulations is in progress and ends in April 2006. They will require water companies to look at future demand on a 25-year time scale. The 2003 Act also introduces new duties on the Secretary of State, regulators, water companies and public bodies to further water conservation. My hon. Friend the Member for Crawley made the important point that people can take simple measures to reduce water consumption: for example, not leaving the tap running or fitting water-saving devices such as spray taps, low-pressure shower heads and twin-flush toilets. None of those devices is particularly expensive and can be installed when modernising a bathroom or replacing fittings. We are also addressing such matters in new regulations on housing.
	The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs mentioned water scarcity status. As he said, an application from Folkestone and Dover has been granted and the company's case was subject to a six-month examination. Any water company can apply for water scarcity status and such applications will be treated on their merits.
	I was impressed that the hon. Gentleman had faced head-on the issue of water meters. They can be controversial, although the response from Folkestone and Dover was muted; 40 per cent. of the company's customers were already on meters, which may be part of the explanation. The company calculated that up to 70 per cent. of its customers would pay less on a meter, which is quite a significant number. Many people underestimate the benefits of water meters, although of course 30 per cent. will pay more because they are big users of water.
	Meters may pose problems for vulnerable groups, as my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley pointed out. I can reassure her, because the vulnerable groups regulations are designed to protect large families on low incomes and people with certain medical conditions. A pilot scheme on water affordability is running in the south-west, which is helping us to understand how we might refine the regulations to improve them and make them more effective. We have an open mind about such things, but we want to make sure that water metering would not cause suffering for the most vulnerable.
	There is an argument for metering; it reduces demand and is a fairer way of paying for water, but there is no water shortage in the north of England—the most severe pressure is in the south and the south-east—so there is not really a strong case for compulsory water meters nationally. We want an expansion in the use of water meters, but it should be undertaken as it is at present—by the combination of people volunteering to use them and installing them in new homes or when people move. That means that their use is constantly increasing, but people still have a choice. It also spreads the cost of fitting the meters, which has had to be borne by the companies. So I think that is going okay.
	Where there is water scarcity, though, there is clearly an argument for compulsory metering, as one tool. It is not the only tool. Companies have a responsibility to ensure that there is proper supply management, which includes such things as addressing leakage; that is taken into account when companies apply for water scarcity status.
	I must correct the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs. He had me worried for a moment when he talked about washing cars with recycled water. When there is a hosepipe and sprinkler ban, it is permissible to use the bathwater to wash a car, or to take water out of the bath with a bucket and put it on the dahlias; that is not a problem and people do that. And of course one can collect rainwater, as my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley rightly said. In fact, I also benefited from a promotion by my local authority, which was giving away water butts. I was very enthusiastic. When I collected my water butt I found a party atmosphere, as my hon. Friend did. I suppose that the idea of getting something free from the council is always popular, so that probably explains the party atmosphere. It must have affected me, because I was so excited about my new water butt that I sawed through next door's downpipe when I connected it; but never mind—it is connected now.
	My hon. Friend also mentioned the range of measures that can be taken. She mentioned Water Wise, a group set up by the industry; I very much welcome that. We have also set up a water saving group, which I chair. It brings together the regulator, the Consumer Council for Water and industry representatives. The idea is to have working streams to look at ways of promoting water saving, in terms of demand and supply management, awareness and new technologies. That process is under way and I am grateful for the enthusiastic support that we have had from the entire industry. Water Wise is also represented on that group and I very much appreciate that.
	The hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening) mentioned a constituency problem of reduced water pressure. I quite understand the point that she makes. Water pressure is sometimes reduced as a way of combating leaks, and leaks are a problem in the Thames region. Thames, like all water companies, has targets to reduce leakage, but it has been missing those targets in recent years. I am glad to say that currently it is on target and I very much welcome that, but it has much more to do.
	Funnily enough, I had the opposite problem in my constituency. People had complained of low water pressure, and I asked the water company whether it could be increased. The company was very co-operative; it increased the pressure, with the result that the water main burst in the street concerned and no one got any water at all. My involvement in that was played down.
	The hon. Lady asked for some advice on what she could do. I understand that there is an obligation and a duty on water companies to provide minimum pressure to pump water to the topmost storey of a block of flats.

Elliot Morley: I acknowledge that this is a local, constituency issue and an important one for the hon. Lady. I will find out exactly what the regulations are on that point, and I will write to inform her.
	On Thames Water, I want to make it clear that while it has met its target for this year, it has not met its overall target for leakages, and I do expect it to get on track in that regard.
	I do not want to say very much more, because I think that I have addressed the main points made by the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs. I recognise that those points are important, but the water supply in the south-east is not in crisis, although neither we nor the companies can ignore the fact reserves are very low. Of course, the companies have a duty to ensure that they match demand and resource management and to look ahead for future management.
	Some companies are also considering desalination. A small desalination plant is working in the southern region. Thames Water has also been talking about a desalination plant for peak management in the London region.
	Companies can apply for drought orders to minimise water loss and if they have to manage water by taking it away from non-essential users. No application for a drought order has been made at the moment. It may well be that, between now and the summer, we may have a bit more rainfall. It may well be that we do not have a dry summer. As I say, we cannot be complacent about these issues, and we must look at the long-term weather patterns. We must take into account issues such as climate change.
	Droughts are not new—droughts come and go—but we need to be careful about whether we are seeing long-term trends. If we are seeing them, we must ensure that adaptations are made for them. That involves planning for water resource management, tackling issues such as leaking pipes and considering the powers available to water companies and their responsibilities in ensuring that water supplies are reliable.
	This country now has one of the highest standards of drinking water quality, internationally. My hon. Friend the Member for Crawley is quite right to say that people should not order bottled water in restaurants; they should order jugs of water. Not only is ours some of the best quality drinking water in the world, but it has not been dragged halfway around the country or sometimes across the continent in trucks to be sold in restaurants. So on grounds of sustainability, I would certainly encourage people to ask for jugs of water in restaurants, not for bottled water. In fact, perhaps we should do a bit more of that in the Committees of the House of Commons, rather using bottled water.
	The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs has raised some important and serious issues. I hope that I have reassured him that not only do we have measures in place to deal with drought and with future water demand, but we are working closely with the companies on their legal obligations to ensure the security of water supply, so that his constituents and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley and the other hon. Members present tonight can be assured of a top-quality, reliable and continuous water supply.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Adjourned accordingly at thirteen minutes past Five o'clock.